


Give Your Heart and Soul To Me

by MontiMoth



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gift Fic, M/M, Minor Character Death, Multi-Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:14:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24079594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MontiMoth/pseuds/MontiMoth
Summary: “I don’t hate you. I will always love you, but I don’t trust you.”
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Kudos: 13





	Give Your Heart and Soul To Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kenmontecinos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kenmontecinos/gifts).



I.  
The buzz of unknowable bugs swarming around the stagnant waters of the lake inundated their ears. The sun had only just begun it’s procession behind the horizon, sending vibrant reds and golds across the sky. Stars could be seen behind the light of the day, faint now but soon the whole sky would be alight with pinpricks of hay blue brilliance. As far as exile went. There were worse places to be, in Sirius’ opinion. There were also worse people to be exiled with. About an hour ago, Peter had wandered off to try and sneak into the kitchens and Sirius wouldn’t be surprised if he were still there, too polite to refuse the idle chatter of the house-elves. It may be days before anyone saw him again, but Sirius couldn’t bring himself to care.  
James had kicked them out of the dorm, to put it nicely. He had been trying to strategize for the show off between Gryffindor and Slytherin and claimed that his roommates were thinking too loudly and that he needed to concentrate. Sirius did not have a mind for strategy, Remus couldn’t be arsed to care, and Peter didn’t have the experience needed to be much help, so they were told none to politely to bugger off. With O.W.Ls at their backs, though, it seemed more a nice respite from the stress of exams than anything else, especially while James was locked away going insane. Remus was haphazardly taking notes on the typography of the lake bed and how it matched up with the Slytherin dungeons for the Map. Sirius had half a mind to ask how he knew what the Slytherin dungeons look like, having never been one to venture down into its depths for pranks, but he kept that question to himself. For the last ten minutes or so, Sirius had been too preoccupied with the way the sunlight hit the flecks of gray in Remus’ hair to worry about much else.  
Things in Sirius’ life had been changing for some time now, particularly where Remus was involved. He didn’t think they were changing for the worse, but he couldn’t help but feel it was monumental in some way. Things at home had started to get worse with Regulus taking to being the favorite son so well, resulting in him finally cutting ties. Sirius could not ignore the way that huge element of his life had been ripped from him. It was terrifying to him, being so thoroughly untethered from the expectations of his name. With that came a lot of self reflection on the nature of how his life would be moving forward. What he wanted for himself, not what his parents had chosen for him. This type of inward actualization was terrifying for Sirius. Sirius had not come out of the womb a black sheep, and the kind of presence of thought it takes to defy everything your family values was uncomfortable. The more he contemplates who he is and what his life will look like, the more pieces of himself seem to fall into place.  
Sirius had realized there was probably more to his general feeling of displacement than just being the only member of his immediate family to have a moral compass. He felt very alone amongst most people, and they all seemed to have certain expectations of him. He hid his discomfort well obviously, and he wasn’t so oblivious that he didn’t notice the way girls in his year had started to notice him. He enjoyed the attention and played along with their cooing and giggles, but he felt very disconnected from it at an emotional level. He didn’t hate them. In fact, one of his closest friends outside of the bounds of the Marauders was Marleen McKinnon with her sharp wit and attitude. He just hadn’t really noticed them back. Not the same way James and Peter noticed girls, anyway. James was a romantic at heart, but even he wasn’t immune to the leering comments and glances thrown at girls in their year. Peter couldn’t keep his mouth shut about then and had a new ‘crush’ every week it seemed. Purebloods were prudish by nature and upbringing, so Sirius had clung to the idea that it was a conditioned fear of intimacy that was the issue, something he could deal with at a later date and play off as him being picky. Remus seemed to be the only one who didn’t incessantly want to talk about their fairer sex, and they’d formed a type of unspoken connection over that commonality in them. Sirius would have been happy to live in that delusion for as long as possible, but reality had a way of crashing down on us spectacularly.  
It was Davey Gudgeon of all people that shifted the tide of Sirius. He was the beater for the Gryffindor team and had a head denser than concrete. Sirius remembered in previous years thinking that Davey was a menace and being slightly impressed by the sheer amount of damage one person could do to themselves for fun. He still had the scar running across his face from being clobbered by the Whomping Willow in their second year and he was missing a canine from jumping off the astronomy tower and face planting into a stone railing. Aside from assessing that Gudgeon was probably great fun at parties, though, he didn’t occupy a great amount of Sirius’ thought or time. Until he suddenly took up way, way too much of Sirius’ thought. Sirius hadn’t ever really spoken to Davey despite playing opposite him on the Quidditch pitch, and he didn’t really have a desire to. When they came back for their fifth year, though, something about the boy had changed. Not his personality, which remained over the top and slightly grating, but Davey was suddenly six foot five and he’d filled into the beaters build. His chest was broad and his arms had the muscle to match the force it took to hit a bludger into the empty Scottish fields and out of view. Suddenly, every girl in their year was after a date to Hogsmead with him, and Sirius would be lying if he said he cared all that much. However, seeing the physique Davey had, the quirk of his smile off to one side when he said something he thought was funny, the angular structure of his jaw set something off in Sirius and suddenly he was thinking more about Davey Gudgeon more than he had any right to.  
He could have convinced himself it was jealousy, it would have been easy. Maybe he even believed it for a while. He started to notice similar qualities in his male peers more and more, however, and it was hard to convince himself their place in his mind was innocent. He couldn’t keep himself from noticing how tall and imposing James had gotten, or how beautiful the Ravenclaw seeker's eyes looked in the midmorning sunlight of their match, or how he could only envision being held by strong, wide hands. After a solid month of him turning it around in his mind and looking at it from every angle and trying to catch himself when he stared at a male classmate for too long, Sirius finally admitted that it was ridiculous and gave up. He was probably gay, and he was fine with that. Well, maybe not fine but he was coming around to the idea. He could live with it, and that was what mattered. His family had a million other reasons to hate him and he’d never cared what most people thought of him. Except…  
He hadn’t told anyone yet. There was a part of him, a deep part in the darkest corner of his mind, that really wasn’t okay with this. It lashed out and screamed when the idea of telling someone else came up, and Sirius was both ashamed at it and himself. He’d drafted about ten separate letters to Andromeda, who would at least be understanding, but didn’t send any of them and hid them in his sock drawer. The idea of telling James sets him on edge and he can’t escape that. There is no reason for Sirius to believe that James would be anything other than supportive, but… he wouldn’t understand. Not really. He’d smile and say that Sirius would always be his brother, but Sirius knew something between them would break. He was naive to think that it hadn’t already. His epiphany had sent a tremor through his sense of self, and now the tectonic plates of all of his relationships were moving and grinding against each other, making horrid sparks.  
James knew something was wrong but didn’t say anything. His style was fairly hands-off, and he knew that Sirius would come to him with whatever was wrong when he was ready. Peter was oblivious, too preoccupied with his own problems to notice Sirius acting any differently. Remus was harder to pin down, as usual. He gave no outward indication that he noticed anything was amiss with Sirius, but Sirius knew he was too perceptive to genuinely not have noticed.  
Sirius supposed it was wrong to say that Remus hadn’t changed at all. He’d become… more gentle in an odd way. Remus was all hard lines and boundaries with everyone, Sirius included. Over the last few months, though, he’d become more physically affectionate. A hand would occasionally find its way to Sirius’ shoulder or lean in a little closer than necessary to show Sirius the answer to an arithmancy problem. Where Remus used to berate Sirius for making a stupid decision or breaking a rule Remus couldn’t excuse away, he would smile in a distant sort of way and laugh at him. In turn, Sirius started to notice how much he liked Remus’ laugh, how much they sounded like wooden wind chimes. Remus started to come to Sirius with things he would once keep to himself, like when he was in pain or when the moon was close and he had nightmares of stark white teeth and dagger-like claws. He became more vulnerable around Sirius. Maybe he just sensed that Sirius needed someone to lean on. All he knew for sure is that he was returning the favor. More often than not he’d throw an arm around Remus’ shoulder while they talked. When issues with his family came up, Remus was the one he went to. He started seeking out Remus’ company, not because he was a cunning Marauder or for his tactical skill, but because he just liked being around Remus. That scared him more than anything else.  
When they brewed Amortentia in potions and Sirius couldn’t tell if the smell of earth and ink and mint was coming from the potion or Remus, he knew it was a bad sign.  
That was about the time Remus started to pull back again and things started to get tenser. Exams were around the corner and revisions had Remus pulling insane hours on top of his prefect rounds. He made any excuse he could to not be in the same room as Sirius, and barely acknowledged him when they were together. He didn’t look Sirius in the eye and was shorter with him than he’d ever been, seeming to snap at small things. In the past, this probably wouldn’t have bothered Sirius. Remus had a tendency to get stuck in his own head and needed the time alone to untwist himself. Now, though, it felt like something was being ripped out of Sirius and it left him cold and uneasy. He couldn’t help himself from seeking out Remus’ company. He felt a bit like he was drowning without it.  
The chill in his bones seemed to subside in the warmth of the setting sun, though. It was the first time they were truly alone in what seemed like months, and to Sirius’ surprise, the silence that stretched out between them wasn’t awkward or unwelcome. It felt amicable and relaxing, like a quiet retreat one used to digest the more complex things in life without losing your mind. At that moment, Sirius could say with complete honesty that the most puzzling problem of the modern world was Remus Lupin. He felt that maybe if the complex map of scars that ran around Remus’ body could be charted, it could lead to unprecedented discoveries. If he could just understand the lithe and graceful moments of his muscles beneath his skin, he could understand anything. Remus’ mind contained multitudes that Sirius couldn’t even begin to dissect, culminating into a snarky, sarcastic, gentle, wonderful person.  
Remus smiled at him, noticing that Sirius was staring but not seeming to care too much. He set the map to one side, laying down in the grass beside Sirius and watching the sky as the constellations began to flicker to life. High above them to the south the dog star burned a blue-purple hue, competing with the sun too far off to be seen. As the temperature dropped, Sirius began to notice how the damp grass had seeped through the back of his shirt and the berry bug bites burned on the back of his neck, but he had no desire to move. In fact, the cold barely registered as he watched Remus’ unburdened face in the hazy glow of twilight.  
It was an unconscious movement, slipping his fingers in between Remus’. Sirius felt the heat of his hand seep into his muscles and expand through him, bringing all of his attention to that small point of contact. Remus didn’t give any indication that he even noticed except curling his fingers slightly inward in a halfhearted squeeze, his thumb lingering on Sirius’.  
“It’s beautiful,” Remus says, and it takes Sirius a moment to realize he’s referring to the stars above them. Sirius had always thought so and had appreciated the tapestry of tales they told, but he couldn’t bring himself to look away.  
“Remus, I’m…” Sirius faltered. He wasn’t sure how to say it; he wasn’t even sure what he wanted to say. It all seemed so simple and so complex at the same time, tangled up in a complicated web of identity and emotions and expectations. Remus seemed to notice that the sentence wasn’t going to be finished anytime soon and nods, looking away from the sky at Sirius, focusing his full attention on him. Their noses were almost touching, and Sirius could smell the minty scent of Remus’ toothpaste.  
“I know. Me too.”  
Sirius couldn’t be sure if Remus knew what he was saying, but he’d never doubted him before. All the same, something in the weight of those words spoke to a part of Sirius that hadn’t realized he was very lonely. A light lit inside him, spreading to every inch of his mind and filling him with a genuine sense of place in a world that refused to stop it’s march forward. The part of himself that screamed at him that he was wrong was suddenly very quiet.  
“Can I kiss you?” Sirius wasn’t sure where the words came from, they just spilled out of him in a rush like a river to the sea. He wasn’t afraid, though. He was steady and certain for the first time in his life, ready to be broken open and seen behind his exterior.  
Remus doesn’t answer, he just closes his eyes and leans forward. The brush of Remus’ lips against his is soft and his breath tastes sweet. It lasts only a few seconds, but it felt to Sirius like a collision of two stars, swirling together and sending waves of color across the sky. Everything seemed to make sense in that second, the tangled web inside him catching fire and burning hot inside his chest until the whole world was ashes and it was just him and Remus.  
“It’s dark already?” a voice rang out into the night and the two sprang apart and twisted around towards the offending shout. Peter was about 100 paces away on the other side of the hill. He probably couldn’t see them when they were lying down… probably. He half runs up the hill with a basket full of what looked like cauldron cakes and plops down beside them. “How long was I gone?”  
Sirius is jolted a little bit as the world comes back into focus and he realizes that it is very dark indeed.  
“Uh… two hours, maybe?” The words come out more thickly than he meant them too and his voice sounded loud to his own ears.  
“What happened?” Remus asked, looking not at all interested in the answer.  
“Bloody elves is what happened. They always wanna talk for hours to anyone who will give them the time of day. They like me a lot though. Look, cake,” he explains, throwing one into his mouth. “You think James will let us back into the dorm? It’s getting cold.”  
Sirius noticed that Peter was right and he was shivering. The moon hung heavy at its peak, casting pale white light into the shifting waters of the lake.  
“I reckon he would. Especially if we bribe him,” Sirius answers while motioning to the basket, trying to sound casual and not completely destroyed by the idea.  
They walk back to the castle, its glowing torchlight a beacon in the dark. It seemed almost like stepping out of a dream as they crossed the threshold, and Sirius felt a profound sense of unease once again. Would things change in the light of day? A sharp of doubt was wedging itself deeper and deeper into his chest.  
Then, suddenly, it dissolved and a new but familiar heat took its place. Fingers brushed against his while Peter took up the front, talking incessantly about something Sirius didn’t have the ability to pay attention to at the moment. An index finger wrapped lightly around his, and Sirius turned to look at Remus. He wasn’t looking back, but he was smiling to himself in a peaceful sort of way and Sirius knew that he wasn’t alone.

II.  
It felt hazy like the world was descending into a flog of uncertain madness. The anger boiled over inside of him in a seething red-hot miasma, but his heart wasn’t in it. No matter how hard he tried, the steadiness of his pulse was sluggish, and his eyes refused to flash with rage. Rare did it seem these days that he was not at least a little mad, but perhaps that was who he was meant to be; a congenital insanity that locked him in the shackles of genetics and refused to let him go. It was comforting, in a consistent sort of way. Rage made him feel something; it made him feel important. Without the roaring beat of his heart through his ribcage, who was he? A broken and scared child? The last vestige of a ship broken from harbor years ago, destined to slowly rot in the sea foam and disappear into a watery grave? Sirius didn’t know, but he felt in this moment so terrifyingly empty.  
He should be mad, he tells himself. The world is unfair and those who don’t deserve to be punished are raked across the coals. Those who do deserve god’s fury, like his family… like him… do not suffer. He should be mad at himself, should lash at any remaining humanity he has left until nothing remains. He can’t, though. He just feels numb. Sirius knows this is his fault, he feels it in the icy glances from everyone he holds dear, but his brain refused to focus on anything but the slight rise and fall of Remus’ chest.  
Sirius had seen it before a thousand times. He’d sat in this very chair, watching the essence of life expand Remus’ broken ribs, observing in reverent awe. He’d watched as the deep, method rhythm of Remus’ breathing swallowed into wakefulness on warm spring mornings when the sun was just over the horizon. It always seemed like a universal contradiction, almost paradoxical, that Remus should breathe so soundly after tearing himself apart. Watching him felt like witnessing a miracle of the best sort. Sirius had felt like a voyeur, watching something less tangible than the most complex magic, especially now. Madame Pomfrey scowled over at him, and the very walls of the hospital wing seeming to reject his presence, closing in on him menacingly.  
Sirius felt Remus shifting and his heart stopped. For a moment he thought it wouldn’t start back up again, and he wondered if that wouldn’t be better than having to face his fate.  
It had been three days since Remus came out of the shack, more broken and battered than Sirius could ever recall seeing him. The vision of the bone-deep and angry gashes all across Remus’ body made Sirius’ heart squeeze uncomfortably. With the exception of a brief conversation with Dumbledore about how to proceed, Sirius had been here in the hospital wing waiting for his friend to wake up. He thought once or twice that Madame Pomphrey was about to scold him and tell him to leave, but every time she tried she saw something in his face that made her bite her lip nervously and abandon it, busying herself with other things, usually at the opposite end of the wing. Part of his omnipresence was the iron hot guilt that refused to dislodge itself from his chest, and part of it was the heavy chill that hung over his dorm. James refused to speak to him, and Peter seemed to just twitch nervously. Above all of this was the very loud absence of the body in the bed across from his.  
Pomphrey placed a bubbling blue potion on the bedside table by Sirius, perhaps with more force than was necessary.  
“For the pain,” she had said before making herself scarce.  
Sirius watched the shifting, constantly moving depths of the potion, feeling very much like he related to it in an odd way. He noticed Remus’ eyes finally flutter open, revealing unnervingly yellow irises. He grimaced, lightly gripping a portion of his side that had been ripped away to reveal the muscles that held his ribs in place but were now a glowing labyrinth of thread and steady hands. A groan of pain escaped his chapped lips as he tried to sit up, and Sirius felt a surge of guilt as he reached forward to help lower him back down, whispering reassuringly as he did so. He let his hands linger on the nape of Remus’ neck beneath the pillow, rubbing gentle circles into his cheek. A hand came up to lightly grip his wrist, holding him there for a moment. Sirius tips his head back and spills the content of the bottle down Remus’ throat, who only seems vaguely aware that he’s swallowing. The rigid posture of his muscles seemed to melt into relaxation almost immediately as the pain dissipated from his body.  
“It was a bad one, huh?” Remus asks, thickly. He smiled a warm sort of smile, blissfully unaware of what had happened. How was Sirius supposed to make his life that much more painful? He supposed it was his punishment for being selfish and rash. His punishment for fulfilling the prophecy of his birth. To burn and destroy, a million miles away from the warmth of the earth. To eventually collapse in on himself in a spectacular way, taking everything with him until there is nothing left.  
Something snapped inside Sirius at those words, and he couldn’t stop himself from sliding his hands back to hold Remus’ face, leaning down and resting his forehead to Remus’. He hoped the tears that slid down his cheeks didn’t bother Remus too much, and that seemed so absurd a thought that Sirius let out a sharp snort.  
“I’m so sorry,” Sirius whispered.  
Remus pushes down into the bed and Sirius gives him space, looking down into the look of confusion in his eyes.  
“Why are you sorry?”  
It did not sound accusatory, just curious. His eyes were soft, partially from the painkillers but also because he was genuinely comfortable around Sirius. With most people, Remus was a fairly closed off and cold type of person, playing his hand close to his chest. Even with the other Marauders, he still maintained an air of never letting himself be fully seen. With Sirius, though, it had always been different. Recently more than ever, he was starting to let his guard down, and Sirius could feel it in the way Remus held himself. It was like he was finally letting himself breathe. That made what Sirius was about to do so much more difficult. He’d taken every inch of that progress and just smashed it on the floor.  
Sirius couldn’t help but feel like he was standing on the precipice of a deep pit, and he had no other choice but to jump. The fear made him hesitate, and the stumble didn’t escape Remus’ attention. His shoulders tensed and his brows furrowed in confusion, almost like he was expecting to be struck.  
“Sirius, what happened?” His voice had an edge of panic in it as he slid up to his elbows, and Sirius didn’t stop him this time. “Oh, god, what did I do?”  
“You didn’t do anything, Remus. I promise,” Sirius says, watching as Remus relaxed slightly, but still looked at him suspiciously. “It was… it was me. Remus, I’m so, so sorry. I wasn’t thinking and… that’s not an excuse. I just--”  
“Sirius, slow down. You’re not making any sense,” Remus cuts him off, hand outstretched to try and calm him down. “Take a breath and tell me what happened.”  
Sirius does as he’s asked, taking a shaking inhale and releasing it slowly.  
The conversation went different than how Sirius had imagined it. Perhaps it was just how he was conditioned, but confrontation of this type in his family typically lead to blood-curdling screams of rage and harsh names and blows from hands with rings of cool steel that cut into his cheek, making him taste phantom iron. It wasn’t like that now, though. Remus just lay there, looking at him very intently, as he explained himself.  
Sirius explained how the confrontation with Snape had gone; how he'd come up and started berating everyone Sirius called a friend. Normally this just gave Sirius an in to torment the other boy a bit, never too seriously. Then, Snape started going after Remus. Remus was rarely a target of Snape’s ire, perhaps just because Remus didn’t engage with the way his friends treated him. It was like an unspoken truce. Remus didn’t engage with Snape, and Snape left him alone for the most part. There was a gleam of genuine malice in Snape’s eyes that night, though, like he knew that Remus was a nerve to be tapped. He had said he’d overheard a conversation between James and Sirius, and that he knew something was off about Remus. He knew he had a deep secret and that he swore he would figure out what it was and tell the entire school. He said it was about time the Marauders reap what they sow.  
Maybe, somewhere deep down, Sirius knew this was an empty threat. Maybe he just didn’t care. However, the familiar bubbling rage filled his throat and in the moment he had no control of what came out of his mouth. It flowed forth like a terrible venom infecting every syllable, and he told Snape exactly what he wanted to know. How to find Remus, how to bypass the whomping willow, how to navigate the tunnels that webbed themselves below the school grounds. The moon was high overhead at this point, gleaming down a sickening yellow hue in the late fall air and the animalistic feeling of the hunt it sang out was infectious. It should have concerned him how much he genuinely wanted Snape to die at that moment. It overtook all of his senses, his entire mind. The image of this child, no older than he, sprawled out on the damp grass, broken and gutted. The thought of his blood mixing with the morning dew. It inundated his mind and he could think of nothing else.  
Snape was already around the corner, his footsteps just an echo on the castle's hallowed stone, before any semblance of clear thought returned to Sirius and he realized what he had done. His mind was now fogged with panic instead of anger, and he searched his tumbling thoughts for an answer. Snape was already too far gone to catch up with and even if he did, nothing would stop him from getting the information he wanted. He gripped onto the first half baked thought that floated past him and he ran.  
James, despite his inability to think before acting in a general sense, usually had a clearer head in emergencies. If Sirius thought it was a bad idea to try and solve the issue themselves, he didn’t have the clarity to voice it. They made it to the tree just in time to see the branches of the willow freeze in the chilling night air, black against the starless sky. They had been fast enough to tackle Snape out of the way close to the entrance of the tunnel. They had been fast enough to reactivate the limbs of the mauling tree and get out of whomping distance. They had not, however, been fast enough to distract Snape from the sharp snap of the beasts gaping maw, just on the other side of the tunnel. Snape had seen the yellow hellish eyes that Sirius knew was watching with a predator's gaze, waiting to strike and rip and tear. Even if Snape didn’t know it, Sirius knew that the wolf had smelled his fear, gotten a taste of the human stink of terror that it craved, and was frenzied. If the wolf couldn’t tear Snape limb from limb, he would turn inward. The conversation with Dumbledore had been surprisingly brief. His office had been cold and unusually foreign, Sirius never having done anything quite serious enough to see it’s interior. The whizzing and buzzing gadgets that lined the shelves would have, under different circumstances, inspired awe in most people. Now, they felt like monoliths on a strange planet, alien and unwelcoming. Despite the somewhat dire scenario, the headmaster never lost his calm and sage demeanor, merely listening as the events were recalled to him. It was explained to Snape in no uncertain terms that he was to remain quiet about what had happened, for fear of severe consequence. Snape didn’t seem too keen on this arrangement, but he always seemed to respect Dumbledore more than most of his Slytherin peers so he agreed. James had even been awarded points for his bravery in saving someone that it was widely known he hated. Dumbledore dismissed them both, leaving just Sirius and him, seated in silence. Dumbledore didn’t seem to know what to say, just regarded him in perplexed concern.  
“I trust this was a lapse in judgment,” Dumbledore finally said, closing his eyes as if suddenly very tired.  
“Yes, sir,” was all Sirius could think to say.  
Dumbledore nodded, staring out his window at the looming moon for a moment in contemplation. “I know more than most how… strong emotions can cloud our better judgment. To err is human. Unfortunately, this will have very severe consequences, and it could have been much worse than it turned out to be. I’m sure you understand that, Mr. Black.”  
Sirius nods, wringing his hands in his lap. Somehow, the disappointment that leaked into every word the headmaster spoke hurt worse than any physical blow.  
“No one can undertake the consequences of what has transpired for you, this is your burden to bear. I trust that is punishment enough for you. Proceed with the grace and delicacy the task requires. Can we come to an understanding on that front?”  
“Yes, sir.”  
“Then you know what to do. Now, I will leave you with only the wisdom of a long life lived. True, unbridled human connection is a gift. Friendship will always be more important than vengeance. Love will always be stronger than hate. I can see the guilt in your face and understand this: you are not evil. We all have the capacity for good and evil inside us, but it is the actions we take that define us. This is a hard-earned lesson, but one that will be very valuable to us all in the times to come.”  
Sirius nodded again, feeling only a little like the headmaster sounded like a fortune cookie. Normally, Sirius wasn’t very keen on the mysticism that surrounded the man, but right now he did feel adrift and any advice was welcome advice.  
“Go, now. I’m sure you have much to think about.”  
The hospital wing was deafeningly silent. The distant chirp of a sparrow could be heard, but that was all. Madame Pomphrey had clearly stopped whatever task she had been busying herself with, not caring now if they knew she was eavesdropping. Remus just laid there silently, staring up at the vaulted beams of the ceiling. He remained like that for several minutes, long enough for Sirius to get uncomfortable but he didn’t want to push Remus.  
“Remus, I--” he started, rubbing his arm nervously.  
“I could have killed him,” Remus cut in, sounding dazed. He was still staring up at the ceiling, unblinking.  
“I--”  
“I could have killed him,” Remus was now focusing all of his attention on Sirius, looking now more mad than Sirius had ever seen him. His face was red and his eyes were almost flashing gold in rage. “A person could be dead right now because of the choice you made, Sirius. But you don’t care about that, do you?”  
“Of course I care,” Sirius replied, trying not to sound too indignant. This wasn’t about his hurt pride, this was about him facing up to his mistake.  
“No, you don’t. Severus could be in a million pieces strewn around the school grounds and you wouldn’t spare a fucking thought about him, would you? In fact, I think you’d be happy about it. One less Slytherin to worry about, right? No, you’re more afraid that I’m going to be mad at you,” his voice was getting more and more frantically enraged with each word, and Sirius couldn’t help but think that Remus was right. He was so terrified of losing Remus that everything else had taken a back seat. He hadn’t gone to see how Snape was dealing with his near-death experience and frankly he didn’t care. Sirius wasn’t sure if that made him broken.  
“I know--”  
“No! You’ve said your piece. It’s my turn to speak. Did you even take a moment to consider how disastrous this could be, not even taking Snape’s life into consideration? Do you know what they do to registered werewolves who attack people, Sirius?”  
Oh.  
“They would have… regardless, now Snape knows, and no matter what terms he’s agreed to I’ll always have that hanging over me. My parents will probably pull me out of school over this and there goes any chance I have at an actual education. Dumbledore could lose his job if Snape tells anyone there's a werewolf going to school here. This is so much bigger than you, Sirius. Did you think about any of that when you made this choice?”  
“No, I didn’t,” Sirius replied, honestly. He could feel the shame in his bones, wrapping him in a cold sort of electric current that was painfully tight. “I wasn’t thinking at all. I’m sorry.”  
“All you can do is sit there and act pitiful because you’re more worried that I’ll hate you than anything else. Do you want to know what the most pathetic thing about all of this is? I don’t. I can’t hate you. You and James and Peter… you’re too much a part of me. I can’t exorcise you from me no matter what you do to me. I’ll always forgive you and you know it and you’ll take advantage of it again, I’m sure. I’m not even mad at you, not really. I want you to understand what that means, Sirius. I need you to,” his voice stared to waver, losing the rage that had powered it in the beginning as if demonstrating his point. His words were, however, very heavy. “I don’t hate you. I will always love you, but I don’t trust you.”  
Sirius thinks that those words may have hurt more than if Remus had just said he hated him. That was painful but tangible and finite. He’d lost people before, and it would almost kill him but he thinks he could handle losing Remus. Maybe it’s because Remus is right, he’s always forgiven Sirius. Any animosity is temporary. Trust is a fickle thing, given freely and easily broken. Sirius was now facing a vertical cliff face, trying to climb back up into good graces. Remus did not trust easily, very few people have his unwavering faith. Sirius used to be one of those people, and to lose it felt like a part of his soul had been ripped away. He was hurt, but not by Remus. This was entirely his doing and he will do anything to regain that trust. Just like Remus is bound to him, he’s bound to Remus. They were constantly pushing and pulling together, like two planets stuck in each other’s orbit until the force of gravity tears them both apart.  
“I need… I need some time. Just… go,” it wasn’t said in anger, Remus just sounded exhausted. Sirius noticed that he tended to have that effect on people. His footsteps echo as he walks towards the door. Madame Pomphrey looks at him with an expression of unburdened sadness. As the door shuts behind him, Sirius can’t help but feel as if he was turning a page of a story that was hurtling towards tragedy. 

III.  
The child-- Marcus was his name-- was not particularly talented. His fingers were not long nor dexterous enough to reach the opposing keys with grace or speed and he did not have the ear for pitch cultivated over a lifetime of practice. He did, however, have an eccentric taste in music that broke up the monotony of Sirius’ lessons, so he couldn’t complain too much. Marcus’ mother, a muggle woman who wore too much perfume and a horrid sable stole around her neck, was paying him 200 pounds an hour as well so as far as Sirius was concerned the kid could play whatever he wanted.  
Today it was La Vie En Rose, and it was one Sirius knew quite well. The song was one of only a few muggle songs that weren’t truly classical that his mother could stand. In fact, she was quite fond of it, playing the bouncing melody in the parlor when she thought no one was listening. He remembered very clearly his mother’s wavering vibrato echoing off the dark walls of the house, crooning out in French about a love he’s certain she’d never truly felt. He thought the memory would hurt more than it did, but it just reminded him that his mother probably had soul underneath all of her disapproving scowls.  
Sirius heard a door open and shut quietly and a chill ran up his spine. He knew the feeling of being near a ghost, cold and silent, and horribly frustrating because you don’t know what it wants. He just never imagined he’d crave it so much.  
Remus had given the typical excuse about why he’d had to leave three days ago. His mother was sick, the unknown illness that afflicted her for the last few years getting worse. Sirius doesn’t know if he ever believed it, but he didn’t have the spine to bring it up. He sensed the specter leaning against the doorway to the room the piano was kept in, just observing. Marcus didn’t seem to notice and Sirius knew better than to look behind him. Marcus hit a sour note and Sirius corrected him softly, setting him up on the next section. He wasn’t sure when Remus wandered off, but he knew as soon as his looming presence was gone, leaving a void behind him.  
Sirius couldn’t help but notice the way Marcus’ mother’s eyes drifted towards the man seated in his living room when she came to pick her son up, and he had the distinct feeling like he wouldn’t see them again for a while. Easy come easy go, he thought as he held the cheque in his hand. He didn’t need the money he got from teaching piano, not really. Even after buying a decent-sized house in Sussex, even he couldn’t burn through the monstrous inheritance Alphard had left him. More than anything, it was just something to do while the world slowly caved in around him.  
Remus was seated in a worn armchair near a window, making annotations in a copy of Hamlet. Sirius isn’t sure how Remus had time for Uni on top of full moons, The Order, and his near month mystery excursions but he always seemed to be doing something these days. Except talking, it would seem.  
Sirius wasn’t sure when the seed of doubt had been planted inside of him, but it was there, flourishing like an uncut weed around every certainty he’d ever had. The ominous warnings of those who’d seen then the destruction war can bring swam through his head, ‘trust no one’. It felt wrong to think those things about a man whom he cared for very deeply; one who had forgiven him his own transgressions and trusted him fully. The difference, in Sirius’ mind at least, was that what Sirius had done was cruel and unjust and thoughtless. Sirius wouldn’t blame Remus for falling in with a counter tide to the way his people were treated. Anti-lycanthrope sentiment was on the rise with all of the major packs in the British isles on the move, and like all ostracized groups they were being played as a scapegoat. Laws and regulations on what werewolves could do and own were becoming stricter, culminating recently with a bill proposed to require all people afflicted to be under mandated house arrest. Sirius and Remus both knew the bill would fail; the Ministry simply didn’t have the manpower to enforce it. The ideas, however, stood as a testament to the current state of things. Voldemort, on the other hand, offered werewolves and other sects on the fringe a world where the current ruling powers were gone, a world where they would no longer be marginalized but rulers of a new world order.  
In the logical part of his brain, Sirius knew Remus wasn’t stupid enough to believe that. There was a part, though, a very small part of him that wondered where Remus went off to in the middle of the night. Why he returned looking like he’d be dragged behind a truck. Why he refused to say anything about it. That was all it took. Just a small crack in the foundation for Sirius to become paranoid. Sirius saw the look in Remus’ eyes when he was turned away from businesses or job opportunities, and it was more than enough to make a normal person wonder if there was something to the rhetoric of a bright new world. So, he sat there, looking at a man who for years had his whole heart, feeling incredibly lost.  
“Mum well?” Sirius asks, not quite maliciously but with weight.  
Remus doesn’t look up from his book. “She’s getting on. Weak, I suppose.”  
Sirius levels his gaze at Remus, looking at his face really for the first time since the man had walked in the door. He looked tired, but he always did these days. A fresh gash ran across his cheekbone, red and angry. Remus had more scars and nicks than there were stars in the sky, but it seemed to look odd on his face like it didn’t belong there among all the half-healed white lines of tissue. Almost without his permission, Sirius’ hand reached out and he ran a thumb along the cut, lightly. Remus flinched back but didn’t pull fully away, his eyes focused on Sirius’ face.  
“What happened?” Sirius whispers, and he’s not sure if he’s talking about the cut or Remus or the wreckage of the world, but he feels suddenly very sad. Remus reached up and placed a hand over Sirius’, rubbing circles into the bony part of his wrist with his thumb.  
“I must have scraped it on something,” Remus replied, and Sirius really felt as if that didn’t make much sense but he couldn’t place why. Everything felt disjointed and off-kilter like he was living in some dream approximation of reality. The world felt fuzzy and undefined like a dream. Maybe it was a nightmare, surrounded by death and fear and distrust. Wrapped in all of those negative emotions was something powerful, though. It felt warm, like waking up to the sun streaming in through your window, casting everything in a rosy haze. He’d take any answer Remus gave him, he knows he would. He’d been right all those years ago, they’re too spun around each other. If he was caught in a web, he might as well let it catch his fall.  
Sirius kisses the cut softly, letting his lips linger there for a moment. Remus leans into it, seemingly very hungry for the contact. He smelled like wet grass and mud and wildflowers, all mixed together in the fragrance of a brewing storm. His lips are soft but cracked and they tasted of blood. At some point, the book fell to the ground and Sirius pushed it out of the way with his foot, leaning down in between Remus’ knees like a parishioner at a prie-dieu. His lips wandered to Remus’ jaw, his neck, his clavicle. It was soft and tender and paced slowly, like a revenant act of devotion. He felt almost as if he were praying to an uncaring god, trying time and time again to prove that he was worthy of his recognition, of his love. Remus responded, of course. Enthusiastically, even. His body moved fluidly and automatically in time. His fingers finding Sirius’ hair, running his hands down his spine languidly, placing a firm palm on his waist. These were all acts of love and passion that under other circumstances would be taken with no second thoughts. They fall into the even motions of the tide, ebbing and flowing with each other, pulled by the powers of celestial bodies beyond their control.  
These were not normal circumstances. The world outside was a raging wildfire, and sanctuary could only last so long. As Sirius’ lips brushed the inside of Remus’ thigh and he felt the rough texture of the carpet dig into his palms, his mind wandered to what he would feel if Remus betrayed him. If Remus turned his back on everything and retreated into a life of dense trees and huddled bodies and gnashing teeth, would Sirius have enough of himself left to be called by his own name? In another life, moments like this would have been savored and cherished, but now they only felt like a desperate plea fallen on deaf ears. Sirius’ body felt raw and wound very tightly, and the electricity that ran between them as light flashing before his vision felt just as much like a panic attack as it did a moment of release.  
A lifetime and only a moment ago, they would have held each other afterward just for the sake of knowing they could. Nothing in the outside world could impact them, the very world could end and they wouldn’t care. Now, though, the world ending seemed like a very likely possibility. More often than not, when they did cross paths in the home they shared in name only, these small sections of time were fleeting and met with diverging paths. They were ships passing in the night. Something felt different tonight, though. Somehow they found themselves wrapped in too thin sheets for the season, fighting off the cold by trying to meld into one being. Remus breathing was even and unburdened, an act of defiance in and of itself. Sirius kissed his temple, brushing his hair away from his face to look at the placid expression he only seemed to have in moments of privacy. Lines of worry faded into expanses of ridged hills and dark circles.  
“I love you,” Sirius whispered into the night, not knowing if Remus was awake or not. It was true, though. There was nothing he could do to change that fact.  
There was little he could do about anything, and it made him feel like he was treading water most days, fighting to stay above the surface of an angry sea. He didn’t know it then, but within the confines of the night, the war would end in the devastation of his entire life. Sirius would be waved around the streets like a pariah, his only family dead, or wishing him dead. The fires outside would reach his windows and blow them in, sending fractals of what he’d built into every possible surface. The fires would die, leaving him miles of scorched earth to travel before he saw the sun again. Just then, though, it didn’t matter that much. He could watch the moonlight glowing rose through the window and forget.

IV.  
Remus had spent the years following the end of the war roaming. Initially, he had no destination or reason to follow. Sirius, through a complex legal process Remus couldn’t begin to understand, had left most of what he had to him and the rest to Harry. This included the house in Sussex, but Remus didn’t think he could stand to go back there. There were too many ghosts living in the walls, too many sharp edges disguised as throw cushions or flower vases. Not to mention the glares from people who still thought he had something to do with James and Lily’s death in some way or another. He’d moved in with his mother, who hadn’t spoken in about five years at this point.  
The death of his father had been hard on her, and she didn’t seem to know how to cope. So she just… stopped. Stopped coping, stopped living. She just sat in her chair and stared at the wall as if she expected it to open up and swallow her whole. Remus had spoken to healers and doctors of all types but no one seemed to offer any concrete answers. She didn’t eat on her own, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t bath herself. She looked through him more often than not, not really seeming to recognize him. By the time she passed away four months after Sirius was sent to Azkaban, Remus felt more than a small amount of guilt thinking that perhaps it was for the best. Not because she was a burden on him, but because she seemed ready for it. He sold her house, left the Sussex house to fend for itself, packed up his meager possessions that didn’t send jolts of pain through him to look at, and set out.  
He knew people probably thought that was suspicious like he was fleeing the country. He guessed he was, but not for the reasons everyone thought he was. It just hurt too much to remain in a wound that was festering with loss.  
He’d gotten a job cooking at a very small villa in the French countryside after crossing the channel. It wasn’t expensive or fancy by any stretch of the imagination, just a small farm in the middle of nowhere that offered lodging. His French was clunky and broken, but the proprietor of the inn seemed to understand his situation (or what he was willing to say about it) fine and included boarding in his wages. She was a bowed and bent older woman named Eulaie, and she never smiled. Her son, a man of about twenty named Theo, helped with the more manual labor type of maintenance the place required. He was keen on Remus in a way that was flattering but made him uncomfortable. He seemed to make a habit out of chopping wood whenever Remus was smoking by the barn, his sweaty abdomen glistening in the sunlight overhead.  
It was about two months into his employment there when he was startled by a priest from the local village wandering up the way with Eulaie in tow. She was speaking fast and animatedly, waving her arms and gripping the crucifix that hung around her neck tightly.  
“What’s going on?” He said to Theo, who spoke English fine and was currently helping him peel potatoes.  
“Mama saw a ghost,” he said, shrugging. “She thinks the house is haunted.”  
“Is it?” Remus replied, and Theo bites his bottom lip in thought. Remus knew well that muggles sometimes attributed normal things to hauntings, but he knew enough about them from his father’s research that he might be able to help.  
Theo tells him about the knocking from the attic they’d always heard. They’d both just attributed it to an animal and resolved to call an exterminator, but never did. Their family had lived in the house for generations, and it had never bothered them before. A few nights ago, though, Eulaie had asked Theo to help her grab some old fabric from the attic for a church friend who was sewing a dress. As soon as they had crossed the threshold, an old wardrobe in the corner began to shake violently until it burst open and out stepped the figure of a ghostly woman in white who was half decomposed, opening her mouth agape and pointing directly at Theo. The shriek she let out was lecherous and made Theo’s skin crawl to think about.  
Remus knew that this was probably a boggart and Theo was just afraid of ghosts or zombie women, but he couldn’t say as much. Remus could hear the priest making his way around the house, footsteps creaking on the ancient wood floors. He was muttering some indistinct phrases in a language Remus recognized as Latin. He picked up on the slightly salty smell of holy water ruminating through the house, making his nostrils burn a bit.  
The priest left sometime afterward, seemingly pleased with his work. Boggarts are naturally drawn to small enclosed spaces and will only wander out in defense, so once it retreated the priest probably assumed it was well and thoroughly banished. Eulaie could be heard thanking him profusely as he made his way down the lane. Remus thought he would give them a hand getting rid of the thing so no one else walked in on it and got scared to death. So that day between meals, he made his way up to the attic to investigate. He hadn’t anticipated the way his hands shook as he opened the hatch.  
It wasn’t that he was afraid of the boggart. They were harmless besides the… psychological trauma they inspired, and he’d dealt with more than his fair share in his lifetime. Typically, it presented itself as the looming figure of the moon, omnipresent and ominous. It was the root of many of his worries, sure, but not traditionally very horror inducing. A lot had happened since he’d last banished a boggart, though, and he worried his fears may have morphed into something more gruesome. Visions of his mother’s body, seeded in the ground and rotting swarmed his mind's eye. Images of James and Lily, bloodied and broken on the ground with they’re bugging lifeless eyes turned skyward, Sirius stood over them…  
He approached the wardrobe and was surprised to see the luminous orb float out to him, serene and peaceful in a hateful and violent way. He cast the spell with a loud crack and watched as the moon transformed into a large bubble, bobbing happily in the air until it popped. The wardrobe before him stood empty, and something in Remus mirrored the feeling of stillness in the air. While a part of him was horrified at the idea of seeing the visions that haunted his nightmares in the light of day, a smaller darker part of him was hopeful that he’d have the chance to see the faces of his loved ones just one more time.  
The memory of his encounter all but left his as he cleaned the kitchen after dinner service. Neither Theo nor Eulaie seemed to notice the noise from earlier and appeared to be in happier spirits for the remainder of the day. As Remus was passing through the small foyer to his quarters he noticed a man that he hadn’t recalled seeing before reading a newspaper. This was not unusual, as he wasn’t in charge of keeping track of guests and they usually only stayed for a short while. Nothing seemed particularly unusual about the man. The picture on the front of the newspaper was what caught Remus’ eye. It was of a man with shoulder-length matted black hair and a vacant stare, eyes dark and hollow. He looked off into the middle distance and then, suddenly, his eyes snapped forward to look at the camera with his dead expression. Beneath the photo read ‘BLACK TO BE SENT TO AZKABAN WITHOUT TRIAL’. Remus’ stare must have lingered for too long and the man looked up at him and smiled somewhat smugly.  
“Des moments étranges dans lesquels nous vivons, n'êtes-vous pas d'accord?” he said, and it took Remus a moment to register that he was being spoken to.  
“Je suis désolé, mon français n'est pas très bon,” Remus replied, his accent very weak and his voice somewhat empty. The man nodded, still smiling.  
“Ah, an Englishman. I apologize,” he amended in effortless English. “Was that you making such a ruckus earlier?”  
“I… yes. I’m sorry for disturbing you, sir.”  
“Oh, none of that ‘sir’ nonsense. I am Victor. You did not disturb me. I have to thank you, that creature making all that noise was keeping me awake at night. No small task to take down a boggart single-handedly, and so quickly, too. You are talented.”  
Remus was a little taken aback by the compliment. “Uh… thank you.”  
“What is a talented wizard doing working in a small muggle inn so far from home?”  
Remus appraised the man, trying to see something in his face that would tell him if he was dangerous. Victor laughed at his hesitation heartily.  
“I mean you no harm. From what I understand, the world is a safe place again. Or so they say. I was just curious about what drew you to this place. If you’re not married to your work, perhaps you could be of some assistance to me and my team? You would be reimbursed handsomely, of course.”  
Remus was not accustomed to strange men in inns giving him job offers, and suddenly his skin felt way too warm and alarms started blaring in his ears.  
“Even if I could---” Remus started but Victor raised his hand to stop him.  
“You wear your afflictions on your face, dear boy. Such interesting eyes you have. I would not have offered the job if I thought it would be a problem.”  
Remus considered this for a moment, looking around the parlor. The wallpaper was peeling off the walls, revealing a molded white layer of paint. The inn smelled damp like it had just rained, but it hadn’t for weeks now. He knew this was a temporary place to be, a job to clear his head from the cloud that hovered over his life. He’d intended to return to England, but now that he thought on it, why would he? What was holding him there? What was holding him here? It was probably ill-advised to continue this conversation. However, Remus felt he didn’t have all that much to lose.  
“What type of job?”  
It turned out Victor Durand was something of a freestyle academic. He was a rich, eccentric man with an interest in potions. He and his team traveled the world looking for unusual or ‘difficult to obtain’ specimens to study their properties. Durand wasn’t affiliated with any major governing bodies or universities, so Remus wasn’t sure how much of his research was viable or even, strictly speaking, legal. He was, however, paid pretty well so he went along with most of it. Durand seemed mostly interested in Remus as an experiment, asking him to try a variety of strange ingredients and recording the effects. Given that it was things like clary sage and blue lotus, Remus had a pretty good idea of what he was trying to do. Every month, without fail and no matter where in the world they were, Durand would provide Remus with a safe place to transform. Afterward, he would ask him excessive questions about his transformations and mental state, documenting it closely. Remus considered that, in another life, he might have resented being used as an experiment. He found, however, that it didn’t really bother him all that much. Aside from that, he and the other researchers in Durand’s employ mostly collected things. This typically included some death-defying, as it would turn out. Remus could only guess that Victor picked his employee’s solely on how willing they were to milk an Acromantula, as everyone Remus met didn’t seem to have much self-preservation either.  
Over the eleven or so years he worked for Durand, Remus learned more about magical flora and fauna than he ever expected to. He still didn’t have a mind geared towards potion making, but that wasn’t really what he was paid for anyway. He saw parts of the world that very few people had ever seen, and creatures almost no one had seen. It took years and many sleepless nights, but eventually, Remus started to feel less and less like he was looking for something and more like he could appreciate where he was. He all but stopped thinking about James and Lily, and stopped worrying and hoping that every time he turned a corner Sirius would be there, smiling at him. They still visited him in the night, and transformations were worse with nothing to buffer them, but he took it a day at a time. He hadn’t been back to the British Isles in more than a decade, preferring to stay tucked away in dense jungles and barren cliffside wastelands.  
It was something of a shock when Victor Durand died. He was well over ninety at the time, but he had the spry disposition of a man half his age. They were somewhere in Indonesia, speaking to some locals about a horklump spotted nearby. Durand seemed incredibly interested in the creatures for no discernible reason. That night while at the camp, Victor took ill. It seemed like it was just a cold, nothing to be worried about, but by the morning he was dead. It happened so suddenly that no one really knew what to do. His assistant, unable to decipher a majority of Durand’s notes, sent them to The Central London Institute for Magical Natural Study in hopes they could be of some use, and the project disbanded.  
Left with no job and nothing to do, Remus wandered of his own volition for a while. He felt lost adrift in a very uncaring sea. He wasn’t sure why, but it didn’t take him long to find his way to Sussex. Being back on English soil felt odd and uncomfortable. The house he’d left behind was overgrown with weeds and the walls were weathered and chipped, but otherwise, the decade of neglect seemed to do little damage. Remus still didn’t feel prepared to open up the wound, no matter how long it had been left to heal. He just wasn’t sure where else to go.  
He nearly jumped out of his skin when he entered the dark kitchen and found someone sitting at his table.  
Dumbledore made some subtle comment on the state of the dusting and asked Remus for a cup of tea. Remus knew the house hadn’t been connected to water service for a decade, but he numbly walked over to the kitchen skin. The faucet had rusted into place, and no matter how much he turned it wouldn’t budge. Dumbledore didn’t seem too perturbed by it and proceeded to ask Remus about his travels.  
It shouldn’t fill Remus with so much dread to see the old man, like an omen of tragedy looming in his kitchen. It did, though. It seemed like every time his old headmaster entered his life something went horribly wrong. His memory jumped to Dumbledore calling him into his office and asking him to infiltrate the werewolf packs, Dumbledore sitting in this very kitchen telling him that Sirius was a murderer. He rarely made pleasant housecalls.  
When he offered Remus the Defense Against the Dark Arts position, something about the way he said it made the hair on the back of Remus’ neck stand on end. He’d heard the rumors about the position, of course. None of his own Defense teachers had lasted longer than a year, and he was under no delusion that the trend would stop with him. Remus was not one to make career choices in the interest of self-preservation, though, and figured with the aid of the wolfsbane potion Snape had offered to provide that the worst that could happen was him getting sacked. Or Snape poisoning him, whichever came first. Still, the knowing glint in Dumbledore’s eyes set his teeth on edge. He had some type of plan, one that definitely involved Remus and probably wouldn’t end well for him, if history was anything to go by.  
Dumbledore was a cunning man, and it shocked Remus that the man hadn’t been sorted into Slytherin with the way he showed up at opportune times, mysteriously. He struck while the iron was hot, knowing that Remus was recently out of a job and somewhat wayward. Remus looked around the kitchen, taking stock of his surroundings. Dust particles floated about, catching the midafternoon sunbeams streaming through the windows, now the only illumination the house got. It smelled musty and likely had some water damage from disrepair. The walls sagged and the floorboards creaked. Everything was still strewn about the place, staying where it had been thrown as the Aurors tore the place apart during the investigation. All of that was fixable, and Remus was fairly handy. What he couldn’t fix, however, was the heaviness in the air. It was oppressive, threatening to take the entire house down with its pressure and bury Remus underneath. It was still, too still. It was a liminal space that needed to be traversed to pass back into the world of the moving and living, but to do so was to rip every last semblance of a life long past lived from his heart, and Remus wasn’t sure he knew how to survive without it. The grief, though mellowed over the years, still beat alongside his heart like a malignant growth, too twisted into who he was to be safely removed. He wasn’t ready to clear the memories of the past and seep into the wall of this monument, not yet. Maybe never. Dumbledore was giving him an out, one more thing to occupy him while the ruins of who he once believed himself to be had more time to crumble and decompose into the earth like everything else that he was.  
So, despite his better judgment and the fact that he felt wildly underqualified, he accepted.  
He now stood at the end of that journey, feeling somewhat lost in a way that he’d always been. Even so, a hope, rusted from disuse, pumped through him sluggishly. Peter had disappeared, but the truth had finally been revealed to him and assuaged a decade of doubt that had wound itself around his insides. James and Lily lived on in their truly one of a kind child, and he now knew the truth about his parent's death and legacy. Remus felt freer than he had in years. He would be sad to leave behind the life he had carved out for himself over the course of the year, but he figured it was probably for the best. If Snape hadn’t outed him, someone else would have and it would be harder to leave the more invested he got. He’d return to Sussex, his fears of the remainder of a lie he thought he’d lived for years put to bed, and try to heal.  
His office was light and warm in the summer heat, filling him with a sense of bittersweet finality. The worn books were packed away and the creatures he’d kept as demonstrations were in Hagrid’s care now. The office looked very empty, every piece of Remus Lupin scrubbed from its surface. Someone else would come by and fail, leaving it to another soon enough. He’d anticipated this not being a lifelong career for him, but it still felt sad to leave it all behind nonetheless. He sat at the now-empty desk and breathed a deep sigh, inhaling the smell of oak and pin needles.  
It should have, perhaps, scared him more than it did when someone climbed through one of the windows and landed with a soft thud onto the wooden floor. It didn’t, though. He’d been expecting it. Or maybe he was just hoping for it. Some type of finite closure over the entire thing. Now that Sirius Black was standing in the middle of his classroom, ragged and dirty, Remus realized he didn’t know what to feel. Relief that the man was alive? Guilt at thinking him a cold-blooded killer for all of these years? Remus just felt a little bemused at the sight of a giant hippogriff sunning itself on his balcony.  
Remus hadn’t gotten a good look at Sirius in the shack, but he noticed just how thin the man was in the light of day. The man he’d fallen in love with was just a boy when they’d met, scared but wild. The fire that had burned so brightly in Sirius was a beauty to behold, but the man who was before him now was dimmer. Maybe not all the way burned out, but the spark in his eyes was gone and he looked… old. Remus realized that it was what they were now. They were both old and broken things, shattered from a war that took everything from them and tore them to sheds, laughing as it did so. He was unhealthy and emaciated, his cheeks caving in with malnutrition. He looked like a ghost, outline blurred in the light.  
“So… Professor Lupin, huh?” Sirius joked, his smile not reaching his eyes.  
“Not anymore.”  
Sirius looked around thoughtfully at this but didn’t speak. Remus wasn’t sure what there was to say. He’d betrayed Sirius’ trust just as much if not more than Sirius had his. There was no room for apology, it was over. They’d just have to move on.  
Remus realized that was far more true for Sirius. He was a wanted man and the more time he stayed here the more dangerous it was for him. Remus had no right to feel heartbroken at that fact, but he did. He thinks he always was. The specter in his life was here to say goodbye, probably for good.  
“Where will you go?” Remus asked, not able to tear his eyes away from Sirius who was running his hand along a shelf.  
“I’m not sure. I hear you’re the world traveler. Where should I go?”  
Home. With me. Remus shook his head, trying to dislodge the thought. He had no right to think that way. Not now, not after everything that had happened. Sirius wasn’t his, not anymore. He hadn’t been for a very long time.  
“The Tarkine is nice this time of year. Secluded, you’ll probably be well hidden. Studied billywig populations there a few years ago, Buckbeak should be happy.”  
Sirius nods and wanders over to the desk, kneeling in front of it. He looked Remus in the eye, expression very intense. “I’ll come back. When it’s safe. I… I want to fix this. I want to be here for Harry and you.”  
Remus thought he was used to how blunt Sirius could be, but a decade of separation did things to his emotional tolerance. His eyes stung with unshed tears and he nodded, trying to keep his composure. He knew it was a bad idea to get his hopes up, but if Remus had faith in anything it was the gravitational pull that seemed to link them together. Sirius straightened up and rounded the desk, placing a hand of Remus’ cheek. He should have resisted. It would have been easier to pull away and let Sirius go without letting himself be pulled full force back in. He also knew he was kidding himself if he thought he could ever deny Sirius Black. The kiss was soft and gentle, just a brush of lips. It made Remus feel like he couldn’t breathe, like every expansion of his lungs was breathing in fire and it burned wonderfully.  
Then it was over, and Sirius was gone again as quickly as he came. Remus sat at that desk for what seemed like hours, trying to put himself together again in the wake of the tragic way he’d been completely and thoroughly undone. 

V.  
Remus had gotten the letter from Dumbledore a day and a half ago and was trying his best to not panic. The house was still in disarray, but it was miles better than it had been. Everything was functional and the structure wasn’t moments from fall apart, but it still had a while to go before it was anywhere close to where it had been.  
Sirius and he had been in contact over the year since his escape. Usually, it came in the form of letters carried by unusual flighted animals. Remus could tell what part of the world Sirius was in by what delivered his letters. Except for the bat, that one threw him for a loop. The package of Kue carried by a laughingthrush made him long for the humid and lush forests of Indonesia that he’d frequented while working for Durand, but that seemed like a lifetime ago. It felt odd, thinking back on that time in his life. It’s as if it were all a dream and he’d just woken up here in the house he’d lived in with Sirius, waiting for him to return. The piano still lay covered in one of the rooms, accumulating a fair amount of dust as Remus was afraid to touch it.  
He wasn’t sure how he’d feel with Sirius back here. Remus worried that he’d be upset with the state the house was in, but something told him that was just disastrous thinking. Remus hadn’t moved or thrown out many of Sirius’ things, feeling that it wasn’t his place to do so. More than that, so much of what Sirius collected over the years spoke to who the man had been. The vinyl records stacked haphazardly on a shelf, the piles of Byron and Ginsburg collections strewn about, the ‘Beware of Dog’ sign he’d bought because he thought it was funny. The house looked lived in and frozen in time, starting from the last moment of peace Remus could remember. It stood as a monument to everything he wished he could still have, and having Sirius here now felt insurmountably scary. They were different now, no longer the young naive men they once were. Sirius was traumatized in a way Remus doesn’t think he’s even begun to understand, finally seeing the sun again after years of being locked away and stripped of the joyful moments that made him human. Would Remus know him at all? Would Sirius know Remus at all?  
Remus was seated on the stoop outside, watching passers-by and picking at a hole in the knee of his trousers when he spotted a large, mangy dog trot up to him. The dog bounded up the stairs and laid beside his front door, waiting patiently to be let in. Remus held his breath as he obliged, watching as the door shut and the dog morphed effortlessly into an equally mangy looking man. His hair was horribly matted and he looked halfway to dead, his collar bone jutting out beneath his shirt. Remus had forgotten how sick Sirius had looked the last time he had seen him, and the knowledge that he was suffering laid heavy on his heart.  
Remus had a visceral memory of Sirius, standing in this kitchen at twenty years old with his hair mused from sleep, smiling in the unburdened way that came with the innocence of youth before the world had brought them both so low. It was a stark contrast to the present and Sirius’ hollow eyes, all light gone from their steely depths. He smiled somewhat hesitantly at Remus, revealing teeth that were rotting from neglect, some missing entirely. His smile was one of gratitude, but it spoke deeply to the underlying neurosis of the situation. Everything was strange and new, mixed with a hateful longing for the past and grief at what the future held. This was a stranger, smiling awkwardly at him in his kitchen, looking so much like he belonged there and like he very much did not.  
Remus busied himself with making Sirius some tea and a decent meal, weary of feeding the clearly starving man too much at one time. He hadn’t asked, he’d just started doing it like it was the only thing he could do. Remus hadn’t offered to show him where anything is, feeling too much like he’d taken over the house that was only partly his too much already. Still, when Remus glanced over he usually saw Sirius, smiling in a deeply sad way, looking at something that he’d once owned. At one point, Remus thought he heard Sirius speak and turned around to see him holding a picture of the two of them with a week old Harry, pink and small, and very cranky. He just stared at it for a good long while, clearly thinking too much about whatever it is he saw reflected back at him in the glass of the frame.  
Sirius sat with him in the kitchen, looking out the window but still filling him in on the events that lead him here. The Triwizard Tournament, in general, seemed to Remus like a very large lapse in judgment on the part of everyone involved, and it brought Remus some grief hearing about Cedric Diggory’s untimely death. He had remembered him being astute and unendingly kind, and he felt as though those qualities would be severely lacking in the years to come. Sirius spoke about Harry in terse, short sentences. Remus knew enough about what the boy got up to during the school year to not be at all surprised by any of it, but Sirius seemed a bit sick at the idea. Remus thought it would be quite a rude awakening for him to realize what exactly Harry was destined for but now seemed like neither the time nor the place.  
Days passed, and Sirius slowly adjusted to being in the house. Perhaps it was a bit like adjusting to the whiplash of all but being transported a decade into the past, but Remus suspected that Sirius had also grown used to the open sky above him, to sleeping on cold cavern floors. A home that had running water and beds was likely an adjustment. Still, they stepped around each other, only ever really exchanging niceties. Remus did it out of a cautious tension, unable to fully let himself be comfortable, unable to take advantage of a clearly traumatized man. No matter what he personally felt about anything, he owned it to Sirius to give him the space he needed.  
Sirius, on the other hand, was always difficult to pin down fully. He hid himself well. In the past, he did it by hiding what he meant in too many words to dissect. Now, he was silent, too full of a multitude of lives lost and adrift in a sea of change. He asked for very little and said even less. He watched Remus very openly, observing every move he made and learning his actions over the course of the day. Remus had gotten a freelance job writing travel guides for a wizarding magazine. It paid horribly, but it got him by and provided flexibility for him to take time off. It also meant he was almost always home, subject to Sirius’ observations.  
A week in, Sirius asked him to cut the mats out of his hair, and Remus obliged. He was very careful not to let his fingers linger too long on the nape of Sirius’ neck or his temple as he guided the hair out of his face. It couldn’t have escaped Sirius’ notice, though, how Remus’ heart had jump-started, racing a hundred miles an hour in his ribcage, aching to be let out. Sirius just continued to look at him, grey eyes appraising but not angry. They seemed to hold an entire spectrum of thoughts and emotions Remus couldn’t even begin to unpack. Perhaps that was the problem. Despite being right next to one another, it felt as though a deep chasm had opened up between them, for too perilous to cross safely.  
Remus had never really lived in safety, but this wasn’t a journey he could make alone.  
A shift finally started to twist the world into focus when Remus asked Sirius if he (as Padfoot) wanted to come with him down to the village to get groceries. The man looked as if he were about to cry, quickly shifting and running towards the door. Remus almost scolded him for scuffing up the wooden floors but felt that was a bit cold-hearted and inappropriate. Padfoot looked… like a normal, excited dog for the most part. He panted happily as he ran in front of Remus, occasionally circling back to run in between Remus’ legs. Padfoot ran up to every person he saw and nuzzled at their hand. He was skinny, but looked well-groomed and cared for, so no one assumed he was a stray. His long legs would carry him forward at full speed, grinning a toothy dog grin as the wind blew through his fur. Sirius seemed more at peace now than he did the entire time he’d been there, and that thought only made Remus’ heartache a little.  
Sirius had explained it to him, once. Remus’ entire experience with transformations was a negative one, so mixed up with a loss of humanity and pain and rage that it would always be a prison for him. To Sirius, the sensation of shifting was a liberating feeling. For a moment, everything was through the lens of a simple, happy animal. Everything was less complicated. He could run for miles and no one could stop him. Remus couldn’t relate, but he appreciated that Sirius got some relief in being outside and running free, if only for a little while.  
Since that outing, Sirius seemed more apt to talk. It was usually about small things: the weather, what Harry may or may not be doing, speculating about the Order and Dumbledore’s plans. Every once and awhile, it looked like he was about to start a conversation, then close his mouth abruptly, looking embarrassed. Remus could guess what the conversation at the edge of his tongue, guarded by blacked teeth was, but he just assumed Sirius needed more time. And he would wait. He would wait forever for Sirius if he had to. He had accepted that fact a long time ago.  
Sirius started playing records in the evening while Remus wrote his articles. It was mostly old, obscure 70s punk that made it difficult for Remus to think, but the smile that slid across Sirius’ face made it worth it. He could write the article later, anyway. Every once and a while, though, he’d key up the record player and soft classic music would drift from it. Remus remembered being nineteen and very drunk, spinning around in graceless circles and swaying with Sirius to this song in their living room. It seemed like a lifetime ago, now. However, when Remus looked up from his page to glance at Sirius, the look on his face implied that he, too, was reliving that moment. Neither of them moved, but neither of them turned to music off, either.  
The piano in the spare room had remained untouched. The thick blanket that covered it continued to build up dust, and Remus had all but forgotten about it. It had been nearly fourteen years since Sirius had touched a piano, and Remus could only guess that it instilled some fear in him. Maybe the years of practice had finally worn down and he couldn’t just pick up where he left off? There were a lot of unknowns, and maybe Sirius just didn’t want to explore one more thing he had lost.  
It was three o'clock in the morning when Remus first heard the sweet, mellow notes of a song, ringing out delicately through the house. He remembers being slightly upset when Sirius would play in the early mornings and wake him up, but just now he couldn’t imagine why. His feet hit the cold floor softly and he made his way as quietly as possible towards the spare room. Sirius was playing a different song than the record, this one slow and melodic. It was sickeningly sweet and made Remus want to cry, but for what reason, he didn’t know. Every few notes the song would sour, not because of a mislaid key but because the piano hadn’t been tuned in a great many years. Remus stood there, listening to the slow flow of the music so like a river in a silent wood, simply watching as Sirius’ fingers spread across the keys. He knew Sirius knew he was there, but Remus didn’t want to disturb the trance-like state he was in. The song slowed and Sirius turned, motioning with his head for Remus to come sit on the bench. He did, watching as the music ebbed and flowed, quickening and slowing in time. They sat there for what could have been moments or hours, lost as the pale moonlight streamed in, and the music wrapped around the beams, echoing on the aged wood floors and plain white walls. Remus couldn’t help but notice how much light Sirius’ eyes reflected back in the moonlight like his soul was finally bubbling to the surface. The age seemed to fall off of his face as he focused on the subtle march across the ivory fields, methodic and free in swift movements. The music began to slow, and eventually stop, leaving the room with the final note reverberating in the air. Sirius leaves his head hung, staring into the keys as if they had some answers to what has been plaguing him. They gave no response-- not a verbal one, anyway-- but something in his resolve changed. He softened and tensed in one motion, slowly turning to look at Remus.  
“I told you I wanted to fix this,” Sirius said, still picking silently at the piano keys. “I still do. I’m terrified to talk about it. You’re here, and I can’t lose you. Not again.”  
Remus looks at him, staring deep into his eyes and trying to unravel him. He wanted to bear some of the burden that Sirius carried with him, but he didn’t know how.“There’s nothing to fix.”  
Sirius closes his eyes, clearly fighting back something from deep within him. “I’ve done so much wrong--”  
“So have I,” Remus interrupted, softly. “But we’re both here and alive. That’s all that matters.”  
“I’m different, now,” it came out as a whisper, a horrible confession to a stern priest. Remus knew that. They had grown and changed in irreparable, horrible ways. Deprived of sunlight, they grew apart from one another, but just like the vines of tall trees, the softest touch sent them spiraling together again, wrapping around one another in an irredeemable sort of way. At a certain point, what parts of him were him and what parts were Sirius was indiscernible, and Sirius was much the same way. Even if Remus wanted to, he couldn’t get rid of the Sirius in his blood. It made him impulsive and brave and wild and grounded. He wouldn’t have it any other way.  
“You’re still you,” is what Remus settled on. It didn’t seem to accurately summarize what he was feeling, but it would have to do. “I see it in everything you do. You’re not broken, and neither am I.”  
Remus wasn’t prepared for the swell of unnameable emotions that rushed through him with long hands reached up to gently cup his cheeks. Lips, soft and chapped, met his. He wasn’t prepared for arms, once strong and now skeletal, to snake around his waist and pull him closer. The hands that made their way into his hair and the tongue that playfully swiped at his bottom lip. He was not prepared for Sirius Black, but he was certainly ready to fall again and he would gladly do it a million more times.  
“Let me take you home,” Remus whispered, grabbing Sirius by the hand and leading him out into the hall and back towards his room.  
Remus doesn’t remember the last time he watched the rose and scarlet of sunrise and felt genuinely at peace, but as he did that morning, the rush of the world outside seemed to quiet and leave behind a pristine stillness.

End

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the English translation of La Vie en Rose by Edith Piaf.  
> If you like my writing, check me out on Tumblr at monti-moth.tumblr.com


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